[private] Journey we more into the Nightmare - Malis

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

He’ll cherish these memories. He’ll hold them to his breast and feed that wanton bauble in his chest with them (it hums its pleasure with the soft throb of Christmas carols.). He’ll store them carefully and gently, where the boy cannot taint them and the colt cannot fear them; it is the same kind of ferocity with which she drives them out of her mind and into that quagmire of forgotten and unwanted toys. (He knows this place well. They have so much in common! 
It is the place where he puts the jigsaw pieces – where late at night he buries them, miles from each other so that they cannot connive and conspire, among the pallid, thin bodies of birch trees. Where he puts strange anatomies and disembodied hands, floating in front of his face; where he puts ice and snow and gaudy, twinkling lights, the rustle of soft, silver bells and the cheer. Where he tries to bury the boy, six feet below, and suffers only his muffled screams and pounding fists, like a heartbeat.

He’d so love to know what she hides there. What ghosts she has threshed from her pretty head, separating them from everything she holds dear. He’d love to know those things, too.)

He preserves the way that blue did not show its bruises, but held it quality beautifully; kept its colour and its richness, so that when it finally broke, at least she could say she had been handsome far longer than some of the others had been. The way that blue yielded and purpled to that sanguinary touch. The way the architecture of her body had felt different beneath him than any of the others – perhaps sweeter, more gratifying, because she had not gave willing or easy. 
The way she had tested the make of his skin and found it mortal. How it had stretched under the pressure until giving in and snapping. The concussion of those horns against his skull, and the rending of thin skin, had made his eyes water. He does not bury this. He cherishes it, perhaps more than any of the others.

* * * *

He had followed her – them, though he had eyes only for her – whenever they came to his kingdom.

They walked side-by-side, like two graceful things in flight, and they talked. She moreso than him, with a voice like crystal and birdsongs. They talked of inane things – of flowers and sunshine; of darkness and of fears (he moreso than her). He followed them, unseen and unheard, as they watched nightfall in his kingdom – foolish. 
The stallion drew queer, bright galaxies around him, and the gift giver gave pause.
(He remembers hard, star-made armour. The tangle of stellar vines and the ready tip of each barb. He remembers Lirren’s jeweled skin almost as well as as he remembers her indigo. But Lirren had come freely – a different kind of delight.)

He followed them, tip-toeing from his forest and past all the places he knew in between…

* * * *

Pollock stares at her with narrow eyes, his crocodile smile spread wide on his lips. “Do I not?” He shifts his weight, letting her come to him. “Oh. Am I to take it that you have some kind of authority to say so? I admit I have no love for this hellhole.” He does not know about her monarchy. They had never spoke of that, not that he had heard. (Nor had they spoken her name, she would be pleased to know – the indigo-haired mare had satisfied herself with ‘mother’, and if the stallion had ever done the same, Pollock had not been listening.)  It would not matter. 
He has profaned under the noses of kings before.
(He has never taken a queen before, though.)

(He let her see her handiwork. He let her look at it, she deserved to see it. He wonders if she will be proud of what she has done. It would be a mistake to try it again, though.)
Then he lets her speak. A mistake.

His smile falters and his black-brown eyes glower, narrower still. He moves, takes agitated steps forwards and around, like a wolf trying to circle. Stopping before he provokes her, but his headgear holds heavy and restless and he bunches and unbunches the unnatural muscles under his golden skin. ‘I think you’re losing your edge, Pollock.’ He loves and hates the way she says his name. Loves, always, the sound it makes around lips. He always hears it like a prayer. Hates it, because he cannot reciprocate. He cannot mouth her name in her ear, not the way he’d like to.

He is breathing heavier, and his face betrays the way she slips under his skin.
“Hmm,” he sounds, gravel and ire. “Curious isn’t it. See, I... I,” he takes a testing step closer still, his eyes and mouth feigning innocent bewilderment, peering to the ground and then up to her, “had been sure that I had broken your... back, was it? Neck? I heard it. Didn’t you?” He frowns, sniffing. “Well, I heard it. Dreadful. And then, well… we both know what comes next.” He splits the last word out like poison in his wine. It should have been sweet.

“Except. Well, I’m a bit fuzzy in some parts, so, maybe you can help me,” he snaps forward with violent speed, almost nose to nose, “you do not look dead to me, either. I know what that looks like well enough. But here you are and… you did not leave alone, did you? You took something with you. It was impolite not to tell me.”
He tuts and meets the blaze of her green eyes in earnest, no longer smiling.

POLLOCK
the gift giver